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The contemplating of God, we might answer.
But to admit its knowing God is to be compelled to admit its
self-knowing. It will know what it holds from God, what God has
given forth or may; with this knowledge, it knows itself at the
stroke, for it is itself one of those given things- in fact is
all of them. Knowing God and His power, then, it knows itself,
since it comes from Him and carries His power upon it; if,
because here the act of vision is identical with the object, it
is unable to see God clearly, then all the more, by the equation
of seeing and seen, we are driven back upon that self-seeing and
self-knowing in which seeing and thing seen are undistinguishably
one thing.
And what else is there to attribute to it?
Repose, no doubt; but, to an Intellectual-Principle, Repose is
not an abdication from intellect; its Repose is an Act, the act
of abstention from the alien: in all forms of existence repose
from the alien leaves the characteristic activity intact,
especially where the Being is not merely potential but fully
realized.
In the Intellectual-Principle, the Being is an Act and in the
absence of any other object it must be self-directed; by this
self-intellection it holds its Act within itself and upon itself;
all that can emanate from it is produced by this self-centering
and self-intention; first- self-gathered, it then gives itself or
gives something in its likeness; fire must first be self-centred
and be fire, true to fire's natural Act; then it may reproduce
itself elsewhere.
Once more, then; the Intellectual-Principle is a self-intent
activity, but soul has the double phase, one inner, intent upon
the Intellectual-Principle, the other outside it and facing to
the external; by the one it holds the likeness to its source; by
the other, even in its unlikeness, it still comes to likeness in
this sphere, too, by virtue of action and production; in its
action it still contemplates, and its production produces
Ideal-forms- divine intellections perfectly wrought out- so that
all its creations are representations of the divine Intellection
and of the divine Intellect, moulded upon the archetype, of which
all are emanations and images, the nearer more true, the very
latest preserving some faint likeness of the source.
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